“Cinema is a time machine, and, as he has long proved, from Last Year at Marienbad to Muriel and beyond, Mr. Resnais is its ultimate time traveler.” — Manhola Dargis, New York Times

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind owes a heavy debt to this criminally underseen 1968 French tale of love-torn memories centrifugally thrown against the walls of the time-space continuum. Like a good deal of filmmaker Alain Resnais’ output here in the States, Je T’Aime… remains unreleased on home video, but we’re stoked to present it to you in a brand-new 35mm print! Claude Ridder is a man pushed to the edge, suicidal over the harsh breakup with the woman he loved — but he’s given the chance to maybe relive the good parts, thanks to a top-secret corporate experiment in time travel that hurtles Claude between random points across the previous decade. As the scientists quickly “lose” Claude to the time void, Resnais, in a bravura display of pointillistic storytelling, portrays our reluctant hero’s banality, carnality and emotionality across a startling array of moments that repeat, bend, fold into each other and provide melancholic counterpoint to his pseudo-current fate. “Ridder is locked into a past that is inexpressible and irredeemable, and the beauty of the film resides in its capacities to convince us of this.” (Jonathan Rosenbaum)
Dir. Alain Resnais, 1968, 35mm, 91 min.